In this episode of NDO Podcast Casey and Cayla take a historical walk through a Game and Fish Department timeline – from the agency’s inception to the price of the first fishing license, closed seasons and impactful legislation – to get a feel for where we’ve come from and maybe some insight into where we’re headed.
Cayla: Welcome to episode 95 of the NDO podcast. On this episode, it's just going to be Casey and I. And for any of you history buffs, uh, we're just kind of running through some notable points in history for the department. Um, yeah, just kind of some interesting, fun facts, things that have changed quite a bit over the years. Um, first, for many things, first seasons or first time, we did a certain thing. Um, also, all of this is on the website. It's like gf.nd.gov\history, but, um, yeah, just kind of some.
Casey: Do we? We don't have the first podcast on this list yet.
Cayla: Oh, no, we should add it. Well, it ends at whenever we did this project. It ends in like 20. We must have done it in 22. And the first podcast would have been fall of 22. So okay, we'll have to add some notes.
Casey: But I was just thinking of the 95th one already.
Cayla: Yeah, crazy. I know that is kind of weird. Um, so yeah, it.
Casey: Seems like the last like the first 50 did not go as fast as the last 50.
Cayla: I agree. Yeah, like.
Casey: It seems weird.
Cayla: For sure.
Casey: But yeah.
Cayla: Okay, we'll get into it. So the first thing we have on our list here.
Casey: Yeah. Before 1975, we did not have anything in this. It was a free for all, let's put it that way.
Cayla: 1875.
Casey: Or 1875 sorry.
Cayla: Yeah. So people were just out there shooting stuff.
Casey: Live off the land. Sell what you wanted. Take what you wanted. Waste what you wanted.
Cayla: So, 1875 we have the first laws were enacted for taking of game.
Casey: I should have looked this up. What? It was in 1875. What they like what were the game animals.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: They say game animals.
Cayla: The other interesting.
Casey: What's the definition behind that.
Cayla: The other interesting thing is that we don't have our first game warden until 1897. So who's enforcing these laws? I guess it'd just be standard law enforcement.
Casey: Yeah, maybe.
Cayla: Who's enforcing the laws for the last.
Casey: Or you had the which was the which came first, the chicken or the egg thing.
Cayla: I guess. Yeah.
Casey: Pay somebody before you have any laws or do you make a few laws and then pay somebody. But yeah, it was.
Cayla: 22 years is a pretty big gap.
Casey: They realized that people weren't good at just following the law.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Mhm. But so yeah then and so 1875 first game laws. Then we had succession 1877 restrictions on commercial sale of wildlife. And so, you couldn't just take live wildlife and sell them or parts thereof and sell them without certain permits or things. And then in wanton waste law was enacted in 1881. This is way before Cayla and I were around.
Cayla: Yes, mhm.
Casey: But so people were worried about those things way back then and I don't think that's changed.
Cayla: Yeah. The wanton waste is pretty progressive it feels like. Um like yeah.
Casey: I should have looked to see what that one actually how that one actually read.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: You know because I'm sure it's a little different than ours reads now but.
Cayla: And I'm assuming many of this was initiated by sportsmen or people utilizing this so it's like a self-imposed hey.
Casey: Right. Yeah, a lot of times these are.
Cayla: Mhm. And then yeah, I guess just various, we have our first game warden like I said in 1897, we started having some um we had divided.
Casey: That was the first game warden and the only game warden for.
Cayla: A while.
Casey: Period of time.
Cayla: Then we kind of have this board, and it's not till looks like authorized in 1923, but our first fishing license 1924.
Casey: Buck 50.
Cayla: $1.50. What can you get today for $1.50? Anything?
Casey: You can't even get a candy bar.
Cayla: No, I know. Not much. Um, but you could.
Casey: Get 365 days of fishing. I think, you should look that up.
Cayla: Well, I do know that somewhere later on, we'll discuss the. It was like 1980 before we did the full year of fishing season, so maybe it wasn't.
Casey: It was a shortened season. Probably.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: And then $25 for a nonresident.
Cayla: That's a pretty big, um, you know, if you were to ratio that out, I bet that's pretty bad. I bet today it's better than that. $1.50 to 25 bucks. Yeah.
Casey: That's a what? That's crazy.
Cayla: I don't know, it's like 2,000% higher, I think. Yeah.
Casey: I don't know, 2300.
Cayla: Um. Well, sorry folks, I suppose people weren't really traveling as much. Um, but we only.
Casey: Yeah. Go ahead.
Cayla: We only sold 274.
Casey: So compare that to just short of 200,000 that we sell now.
Cayla: Yeah. Yeah.
Casey: So demand has changed put it that way.
Cayla: And then, uh, I guess Game and Fish as we know it, as we'd like to say. So not passed into law until 1929. And then, um, kind of the department beginning in 1930.
Casey: Yeah. It was weird that state legislators passed it into law, and then the voters had to approve it. Um, in 1930, I'm not as that's maybe because it's a cabinet agency.
Cayla: Um, yeah.
Casey: It had to be done.
Cayla: We have big plans for our hundredth anniversary? We're approaching it.
Casey: Yeah, I don't know. I'm not on the planning committee as of yet.
Cayla: I’m sure you will be.
Casey: Yeah, for sure I will. But yeah. Yeah, that's getting pretty close, huh? So, yeah. And then we had so now we're skipping from that was 1929 and then 1930 of course we so there's already a couple game wardens on staff. Um, but in 1930 then the enforcement division was established. Um, and it was a chief game warden and 12 field game wardens.
Cayla: If you think about, um, you know, we just had Joe on and we have like 40 wardens total. Not all of those are field district wardens. Um, that hasn't grown as much as other things have grown. You know.
Casey: I'm not sure we've kept up with the increase in people.
Cayla: Yes.
Casey: And users in the ratio again. Um, but yeah. And then in 1931, we had our first deer season that had its own license, where you had to have a license to go deer hunting.
Cayla: And we also had the first issue of the North Dakota Outdoors magazine, which is pretty cool. Surprised we got that rolling so fast, but I suppose that was one of the only ways to get information out.
Casey: And, and sometimes so we've talked about in the past here with individuals, we talk about these reservoirs that we have on the landscape and how they're aging out. Just to put a picture in some of your minds, if you fish a lot of those smaller reservoirs, they were built between 1933 and 1939 with the Civilian Conservation Corps. And so like ones like Fish Creek and those small little reservoirs that we have are getting up there in age and they're getting silted in and they're getting, you know, there's a huge expense to make them as productive as they were when they started.
Cayla: And then, um, not on our timeline, but 1937. We have Pittman-Robertson, um, so sport Fish or sorry Wildlife Restoration Act? Oh my gosh, that was bad.
Casey: DJPR. Yeah, so that's.
Cayla: Just Pittman-Robertson, Sportfish didn't come till later, but yeah. So the Wildlife Restoration Fund established so excise tax to be put back towards wildlife management in 1937.
Casey: So that's realistically how the, where the majority of our funds come from.
Cayla: Right.
Casey: The work the Game and Fish does. Um, whether that's counting deer or, or managing wildlife management areas. And we even use a fair amount of that on, um, our private lands programs because payments to private landowners. So, um, but yeah, that in 1937 that was created. And then in 39, we were able to use some of that funds to purchase our first WMA over by Dawson.
Cayla: I guess I should have known that Dawson WMA was the first one, but yeah.
Casey: So $5 an acre.
Cayla: Wow, what a deal.
Casey: What a deal. Well, it depends proportionally. We may have overpaid in 1939. I'm not sure.
Cayla: Yeah. That's true. Well, if a fishing license was only $1.50 or was $1.50. Right. I feel like an acre of land.
Casey: Or 25% match on the Pittman-Robertson dollars, it took a while to get.
Cayla: Yeah. Yep.
Casey: At what? It was 480 acres. So.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: You can do the math.
Cayla: We're not gonna do that math.
Casey: We failed at the first math. We're done. Right. Yeah. And then. So then we had our. This is weird for salmon. Um, stocked in the state, it was 30,000 coho salmon put in Strawberry Lake in my backyard almost.
Cayla: What does it have now? Just pike.
Casey: Pike and bluegill.
Cayla: And the old salmon.
Casey: And one old salmon.
Cayla: I don't know, that's crazy.
Casey: Maybe going around in circles in there, but, yeah, it's kind of wild. It would be interesting to know why they chose Strawberry Lake.
Cayla: Well, I guess like you said, somewhere later on we'll get to the very few number of water bodies that existed. So I guess there was not nearly the options. But, um, why we I don't know. That's an interesting.
Casey: Yeah, it is an interesting one.
Cayla: It was probably the best of the minimal lakes we had, but it's just like we probably. Yeah, yeah. Surprise. Salmon we even thought stood a chance.
Casey: yeah.
Cayla: That'd be crazy if one was still in there. How old do salmon live? I don't know, we gotta ask Russ.
Casey: Not that long.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: You gotta have Russ or Paul back on, um. But. Yeah. And so we had that first deer season in 1931, but then in 1941, ten years later, we were harvesting 2,890 deer.
Cayla: Yeah. It says the estimated deer population was 7-8,000 animals. Um, and yeah, we harvested 2,890. And it says that hunters at the time claimed it was one of the best big game seasons ever. So just saying.
Casey: So in other words, the deer population was trending up.
Cayla: Yes.
Casey: If hunters were saying that. And one thing I think we need to picture in our head is what did what did it look like across the state at that time? Just came out of the dirty 30s.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: You know, they're not far behind. And as we know, it doesn't happen overnight that those populations rebound or build. And so yeah, ten years after the first one in 1931, which was probably a pretty lean season, um, 1941, we're up to the greatest deer season ever at 2,890 deer.
Cayla: Yeah. That's all, I guess perspective. Um, yeah.
Casey: If it was worse than that, it's better now.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Right.
Cayla: Uh, same year, I guess we allowed, uh, hunting on the national grasslands for the first time.
Casey: So, in other words, the national grasslands were closed to hunting. You had to get a special little free permit check in. And so, it's interesting, like some of those things we take for granted somebody worked to get open.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: At some point. And we'll see that later in the thing when we get to state trust lands, most a lot of people think that was a that's always been open. Nope. That's not the case. But yeah. So then we had some of our bigger reservoirs put into place, um, like Lake Ashtabula, you know, Audubon, Heart Butte, Jamestown, those were constructed during 1949 to 1956. And so now we're adding water bodies, adding lakes, adding potential fisheries. Um.
Cayla: Yeah. It says I'm skipping ahead a little, but that was like between 1949 and 1956, we added some of these larger reservoirs because in 1953 we were sitting at 22 fishing waters in the state. So that's where it's like maybe Strawberry Lake was the best of the 20 or so.
Casey: So if we add Strawberry, that means we had Long Lake, Crooked Lake because they're all on the same.
Cayla: Oh. Uh.
Casey: The same Turtle Creek drainage and there are natural lakes.
Cayla: So not a lot of options.
Casey: Them might not have been very deep. I know, like Crooked Lake, knowing some of the people that lived there, they used to hay the bottom of Crooked Lake.
Cayla: Oh, wow.
Casey: In dry years and stuff. So.
Cayla: And it says in the 50s, Devils Lake, um, was hardly in the picture. Um, it was pretty dry. Not much to it.
Casey: Actually, there was at one point a discussion. Well, it was dry for quite a while, but at one point there was a discussion on the Garrison Diversion, McClusky and New Rockford Canal project, there was a discussion to bring water to Devils Lake when they were starting to build that thing. And then as Devils Lake started to flood, then they were wondering if they could use it to bring water the other way. And I don't know how well the slope was managed in that system when they built it, but yeah, it was kind of interesting. So what do we got? Oh, and then in 1950, that's also when, uh, the DJ, Dingle Johnson Act was enacted.
Cayla: And so that's our sports fish.
Casey: That's the Sport Fish Restoration Act.
Cayla: So the kind of the equivalent of an excise tax. Um, put back towards.
Casey: Um, fishing equipment to go back to. So those work PR and DJ, the federal government collects those excise taxes from the manufacturers essentially. And it goes back to the Fish and Wildlife Service, who then has a formula that distributes it out to the States. Um, and then the states have to match those dollars, 25% to 75% federal. And that's how we get majority of the things done. Fishing and hunting wise.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: Fishing and wildlife I should say.
Cayla: So then um, kind of in the midst of some of this fishery stuff, 1951, um, after the near disappearance of pronghorn across the state, we have our first hunting season, um, since 1899. So starting to rebound. What I'm gathering about how many times pronghorn are listed here is that they're kind of sensitive.
Casey: Up and down.
Cayla: Up and down. Yeah.
Casey: Yep. Yeah. And the interesting thing was, is they were they were over most of the especially mixed grass shortgrass prairie in North Dakota and uh, at one point. But as things pronghorn typically were long migrators, um, and so as things got sparsed out, roads, fences, you name it, like that all starts to shorten how far they can migrate and how far they can go. And, you know, maybe going from Washburn down to Bowman was as far as they needed to go in one year. But like as that got harder to do then some of those things started to wane. And there was a point, I don't know if we have it in here, a point when they reintroduced pronghorn to up by Turtle Lake.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: Um, might have been in the early 80s, but. And there's still some remnants right around up there. But it wasn't like it wasn't enough to take off, you know.
Cayla: Then we've got also in 1953, Garrison Dam is completed. Um, I can't imagine that. Sounds like I just that'd be so crazy to, like, I don't know,
Casey: See what it was before.
Cayla: And, like, even sometimes when you're sitting on or around the river and it's like, wow, this is what it used to look like. Or even like, now that the lake's kind of low, you can kind of envision it a little bit. But yeah.
Casey: Or you could think of like in June, everything that's flat along the river was water.
Cayla: Right.
Casey: In the fall, every spring and flood, you know.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: The snowmelt came down. Um.
Cayla: Crazy.
Casey: There's a lot of houses down there now.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: All right. So we're. Oh, 1954. We have our first statewide bow season for deer. Um, so we went from what was what was the other one, 1941?
Cayla: Well, we have.
Casey: We harvested 2,800 animals in our deer season, which was probably mostly rifle.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: Um, but now we have a bow season and we sold just over 1,100 licenses in 54. So only, you know, 13 years later now we're almost selling as many licenses as deer we harvested before or half. You know.
Cayla: It's interesting the season ran October 9th through the 24th.
Casey: So yeah, pretty short compared to now.
Cayla: And, uh, yeah, just kind of an interesting not like really early and not during the.
Casey: Yeah. And then again, 13 years from that 2,800 harvest, 1954 was the first time that we had more than 40,000 deer licenses in the state. And so now we're starting to see an increase and I don't know.
Cayla: Oh, so 1954, we have 40,000 deer licenses.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: Okay. So proportionally bow is.
Casey: Right pretty low. But in 41 we only harvested 2,800, had 7-8000 deer in the state so something happened here.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Um, probably came out of the dirty 30s. Things got wet. Um, habitat grew on the landscape. And then and also right about just shortly after that, we had soil bank came in, which, um, increased habitat across the state. And you want to do 61, 1961 guess where the walleye capital of the state was.
Cayla: The walleye capital of North Dakota, I wish it was North America. That'd be hilarious. But it's not walleye. Capital of North Dakota is considered Lake Tschida. Um 24 of 25 fish over 10 pounds reported to the whopper club came from Lake Tschida. I wonder where the other one came from? That's kind of. Well, I mean, it's still a good fishery, but it's just kind of silly to think about now but.
Casey: Mhm. So that's like a pretty new reservoir that's built up.
Cayla: I was gonna say if you think about it, I was going back where that was. That one was listed in the.
Casey: 56 Was the last year it was listed in that list. But I think what was it, 1950 to 1956 that those were.
Cayla: Yeah. So you think about too just how we talk about it was probably in its prime of production um, you know, and then they start to age. But.
Casey: Yep. Which makes sense.
Cayla: Mhm. Um, we also skipped over 1956 photo in the North Dakota Outdoors magazine of 106 pound lake sturgeon from the Pembina River is suggested to be the largest fish ever taken in North Dakota.
Casey: Which don't we have paddlefish bigger than that?
Cayla: I don't know. Yes. Yeah.
Casey: Yes.
Cayla: Or around that at least. Yeah. Because they talked about like about 100 pounds. And then Paul was like, is that more than you Cayla?
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: Which is not quite. I'm a little over 100.
Casey: I think we've had a couple paddlefish taken that are bigger than this. Yeah, since this was maybe written but.
Cayla: Yeah, that's crazy. And now we've got some efforts, like we said, to, um, reintroduce those both on the Minnesota and North Dakota side. We've done some, um, taking out some of those dams that impede what Casey?
Casey: Fish passage.
Cayla: Nice, fish passage. Um, so, yeah, some cool efforts there to maybe get back to 106-pound lake sturgeon. Uh.
Casey: And then going to 1963 shortly thereafter. We must be hitting we're hitting a wet period, and we're completing some of these reservoirs, and we've got 100 fishing bodies.
Cayla: That's a big jump. From 1953 to 1963, we went to 22 to 100 fishing waters. So now we're talking.
Casey: A lot of water on the landscape.
Cayla: Um, what do I got next? A little bit of a jump here. Um.
Casey: So I was 63 well, 72.
Cayla: Yeah. Rising waters, Devils Lake is stocked, uh, 1970-1971 and people are starting to catch those fish for the first time in many years. Um, so, yeah, we talked about in the 50s, Devils Lake was hardly even worth mentioning. And by 1972, we've now stocked it and catching some fish. It doesn't say what species, but yeah, it only took a year. I don't we must have stocked some catchable.
Casey: Yeah, probably.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: And then in 1975, since we've hit on all the other deer season stuff, the department implemented the unitized deer management system that we have for our gun season. So that's where the 2Ks and the 4Bs and the all those units came from.
Cayla: Think it was all the same units. I don't know.
Casey: No. There's been some switches even.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: You know, since I've been with the department where 1 or 2 units gets jockeyed around a little bit, but for the most part they've been pretty static for quite a while.
Cayla: Was anyone like, I'm sure someone was involved then, but I feel like people would have been mad. Like you went from statewide to.
Casey: Anytime there's a change in North Dakota, people are mad. Somebody’s mad. Um, but yeah, I'm sure and I can't remember if this was a period where now the deer license numbers were trending back down. You know, I know there was big winters in like 77 and stuff that pushed him down. But um, yeah. So it may have been a response to something where it was like, we need to have better management to, you know, maintain where these deer are getting harvested to maintain a more evenly distributed deer herd across the state but.
Cayla: Then we've also got the first bighorn sheep season was held with 12 licenses.
Casey: And so, we're getting close. We gave out there was ten licenses last year in North Dakota, nine that the state gave out and then one that MHA gave out, Three Affiliated Tribes. Um, but yeah, I feel like I'm not 100% sure if those 12 licenses were all for big rams like we're doing now.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Um, but we've had a few die offs from pneumonia in certain herds and some transplants that weren't as successful as others. And then it seems like once we got those sheep from Montana, that's when our heard really started building back up. And then the with the opportunity to do that with Three Affiliated Tribes on some of the reservation lands, that's turned out excellent.
Cayla: 1976 we got salmon in Lake Sakakawea, now we're talking.
Casey: Now we're talking, Chinook salmon, big ones. There's probably still some people around that have been fishing it since the introduction of the Sakakawea.
Cayla: I'm gonna go out to Strawberry with my downriggers. You don't even need a downrigger.
Casey: You should be able to find the bottom of Strawberry. You have to work around the jet skis now, though.
Cayla: Yeah. Uh, we've got our first experimental paddlefish snagging season 1976. So this year will be the, I wonder if any one of those crazies will be celebrating 50 years of snagging.
Casey: 50 years of paddle fishing if they caught a fish.
Cayla: Let us know if this is your 50th paddlefish snagging, that'd be a cool story.
Casey: Yeah, it would. Fished it every year. Now, I don't know. The question is, have we had it open every year since then?
Cayla: Yeah, I don't know.
Casey: I'm not 100% sure of. And then 1977, the year I was born.
Cayla: I was gonna say.
Casey: That's interesting.
Cayla: I don't see Casey Anderson, born on this very important timeline.
Casey: It was a good year because we had the first moose season in North Dakota, and we had a whole 10 licenses issued, which last year we had just short of 300.
Cayla: I was gonna say I had no idea what that number was. Okay.
Casey: I think it was 296 I think we had last year. So that's a pretty good jump for a big critter on the landscape.
Cayla: Also, Casey was born and we're like, oh, people better have hunter safety.
Casey: That's gonna be for you, sir.
Cayla: So, uh, everyone born after December 31st, 1961, has to take hunter safety. Whoa. Oh, I suppose for whatever reason, it's passed in 77, but it doesn't take effect until 1979. I get a little delay, but it seems like a long delay.
Casey: Yeah, that was that. Must have been in the. Well, probably because we had to build the program first.
Cayla: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
Casey: It's probably a okay. We're going to pass this. And then it would have technically come into effect like August 1st of 77. But they probably went, okay, give em this amount of time to.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Try to figure out how to run the program. And it's all pretty much run by volunteers. And so, thanks to those volunteers, we just had the volunteer banquet the other day. And so that was cool. And then but the winner of 77, that was also my fault, probably.
Cayla: I was gonna say, do your parents have any stories about, like.
Casey: Yeah, there's pictures.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Um, Save the Deer campaign in 77, 78.
Cayla: Uh, it says ultimately resulted in the start of the legislature earmarking funds for the private lands initiative.
Casey: So that would have been. It wasn't PLOTS at the time, but we did do habitat plots we called them. Every once in a while. You can still see one of those really old, they were rectangle signs that somebody would put up. I think they were the white background with green letters.
Cayla: Okay.
Casey: Habitat plot funded in part by North Dakota Game Fish Department or whatever on private lands. And a lot, a lot of tree plantings, grass plantings, kind of building out from, um, maybe riparian areas that landowners had and stuff to try to bolster the deer population.
Cayla: Also, I find it funny that it was called Save the Deer campaign. Like, I don't know if they thought that one through because it's like I could go either way with what if I see a billboard that says Save the Deer.
Casey: Right, yeah.
Cayla: Yeah. Am I thinking that it's to build up habitats so more people can hunt them? Or is it. Yeah.
Casey: Well, those were different times.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Those things didn't come up back then.
Cayla: Yeah. Okay. 1978 the pronghorn season was closed. I'm guessing that had something to do with the severe winter of 1977, 1978. So and remain so until 1982. So again, um, yeah, they're having a hard time recovering from, um.
Casey: Just take it's just so much longer with those big critters.
Cayla: Yeah, yeah. Well, um, I can't remember when we talked. I don't know what episode this is, but when we talked with Ben Matykiewicz, but, um. Yeah, just obviously. So some of them actually die, or a lot of them die. So then you have fewer breeding. But even that next year they may not be pregnant or it doesn't survive because they're in such poor condition. So then you're talking like a two-year delay until they actually give birth to another one. And then it takes time for that one to grow up and be right. So you're like almost three years out. It kind of makes sense.
Casey: Yeah. And most, most deer and pronghorn, like where they really make gains is in twinning. Like if they have twins or more. Um, but like twins. Twins, all things being equal should be pretty easy. Like. But when there's habitat loss, habitat quality, bad winters like. Yeah, they're either going to have none or one. And then then they're just replacing themselves maybe for the next winter in some cases. But yeah. So yeah, it just takes a long time. And then we had in 1980. So when did when did we put the Chinook salmon in there again. You go back some of this stuff is.
Cayla: Chinook salmon.
Casey: In 76. So in four years then we attempted to spawn our first Chinook salmon during the fall run in lake.
Cayla: It's interesting it says attempted. So did we fail?
Cayla: I don't know might have we might have.
Casey: We maybe weren't very successful in figuring out how to how to actually get them when they're ready to spawn.
Cayla: Like, yeah.
Casey: You know, now, of course we do. Electroshocking and some of that stuff, which I don't think we probably did back then.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Um, and so we were probably just trying to like, net them in a bay.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Or something like that. That'd be an interesting one to ask Russ or Power.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: What year is that?
Cayla: 1980.
Casey: Oh, Power was here.
Cayla: Yeah.
Cayla: Power attempted to.
Casey: Maybe he was the one.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: But yeah, so now we're getting to the point where we're trying to utilize the, the fish that we brought in.
Cayla: And 1982 first elk season was held. Hunter's choice of harvesting an elk or a moose.
Casey: So we had a moose season earlier.
Cayla: Yes, 1977.
Casey: And we were like, okay, instead of giving, we have a few elk. So let's make those licenses where you can shoot either or. And I don't know how many licenses that was, but we gave out 960 elk licenses now.
Cayla: Yeah so.
Casey: So what? Ten, ten in 77 were moose licenses. We added the elk season. You could shoot either.
Cayla: If you could shoot either or I'm sure it wasn't remarkably you know because we didn't want people shooting a ton of moose.
Casey: Right? So. Yeah. Interesting. And the first elk was taken in the Pembina Hills.
Cayla: The year after, so, yeah. No one got one that first year. Um, yeah.
Casey: Crazy. Crazy to think that's I remember 83. Like, that's not. That doesn't seem that long ago.
Cayla: All right. 1983 also. So first elk harvested and some state school lands are open to public access. And then it says over the next four years, almost all of them are open. But yeah, so not a given. And also, I was just talking to a few states on a call, it's not a given currently in other states.
Casey: Yeah. And so yeah, I remember this being a big to-do when it happened because there's a lot of conversations going around about it. And, and yeah, a pretty big pretty big step forward for public access. You think about now this is in 83 when access to private lands was probably a lot easier.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: If this wouldn't have happened I think it would be like now.
Cayla: Right.
Casey: As a hunter if you didn't have property or have public land or private land to go on, you're, you're severely limited. If that wasn't an opportunity and then we had what, 84, the first North Dakota outdoors calendar.
Cayla: The price per calendar was $2. I should go grab one. It's not much more.
Casey: Three?
Cayla: I think it’s
Casey: Five?
Cayla: I think it might be five.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: Um, so. Yeah.
Cayla: Pretty much. Yeah.
Casey: So that's not a moneymaker?
Cayla: Yeah. Nope.
Casey: It's, uh. But it is funny how many people want that.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: Bugger. Just mostly for the season’s times. They don't care about the dates.
Cayla: Yep.
Casey: Other than you know deer lottery deadline, opening day those kinds of things.
Cayla: Even as with one hanging in his wall, works here, editor of the magazine... missed the turkey deadline. He was all.
Casey: We won't name names, but you can figure it out if you.
Cayla: He's only had gotten one turkey and he's like, oh, I'm so excited, I'm gonna go hunt turkeys. And then he was talking to us and he's like, yeah, we're gonna go out and look. And then we're like, oh, did you apply? And he's like, when's the deadline?
Casey: Yesterday.
Cayla: Yesterday it was yesterday. It was like, come on Ron it's been hanging right there.
Casey: Yeah. We used to use it mostly before we had all the fancy phones and stuff for sunrise and sunset.
Cayla: Yeah, I know, it's so funny to think.
Casey: As a kid we would run back and forth.
Cayla: I was just talking to someone, I do vaguely remember this from being a kid and looking in the like, Minnesota hunting regulations, and they had the sunrise sunset table with all the with plus seven minus four. But like that is just when I was a kid.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: Since like, I don't I was just talking to there's so many people here still doing that. Like well this is what the calendar says. So I'm going to add four minutes, but I'm in mountain time. I'm like, you guys, this sounds awful. Just Google what time is Sunrise in Bowman or whatever, wherever you are, and it tells you in the correct time zone.
Casey: Hey, you're gonna make a calendar irrelevant here pretty soon.
Cayla: I just feel like you guys are working way too hard to figure out, so I haven't done any of that math. Um, and then I just often screenshot it, like, if you don't have service, look it up before you go screenshot it and then, yeah, set your alarms accordingly.
Casey: But I always get confused. Like, did my phone change over or didn't it when I got there?
Cayla: But yeah gosh.
Casey: I've got two phones. I've got a personal one and my work cell phone, and I've had it where one of them changes and one of them doesn't. And then I'm like, okay, now which one's right?
Cayla: I also remember having a very embarrassing conversation with my brother about like, it always seems like daylight savings falls on deer opener, one of the deer weekends, and it's like, no, we get to sleep in. And he's like, no, we fall back. Well, like the clocks fall back. But sunrise is a thing that happens. So like, yeah, the clock falls back, but sunrise comes, you know, like, we still have to. There's no change in sleep. We're getting the same amount of sleep.
Casey: But especially if you're going when the sun, if you go to bed, when the sun goes down and you're getting up to be the half hour before the sun rises. Yeah, it's gonna be the same time.
Cayla: Yeah. The sun doesn't just delay an hour for us.
Casey: I wonder if they had a photo contest for this calendar.
Cayla: Yeah, I don't know, I'll have to ask Ron.
Casey: Because that's kind of how they do it now.
Cayla: Yeah. Ron would remember. Um, I should ask when the first contest was. Yeah. All right. We got way off on that one. Yeah.
Casey: 85, CRP, yeah was established.
Cayla: And you can just kind of watch and we'll go over some things so you can kind of watch that build and the impact it has on all things.
Casey: So yeah, whether you whether you agreed with CRP, um, or not, one thing that's undeniable is it was a wildlife population benefit.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: Almost too good in some cases.
Cayla: Um okay. So then 1986 Sport Fish Restoration Act, which was, what do we say 1950 that, that was um, now it's modified. So sometimes we make some changes where it's those funds can also be used for development. So basically, think boat ramps.
Casey: Yeah, so this.
Cayla: More than that but.
Casey: So you gotta think of these are an act of Congress 1950. They put the Dingell Johnson act in to get those taxes and use it for fish management. So that would be things like you probably use it on creating fisheries, water bodies. You could probably use it on, um, stocking those kinds of and like test netting for fish, those things that are direct fisheries related. But it did not include boat ramps.
Cayla: Access basically.
Casey: And access to some of those fisheries. And so, in 86, they had to make an amendment. And like I said, that's got to go through Congress to allow those opportunities.
Cayla: And so it says the first department cost shared concrete ramp. Um, which is crazy to think about now. Now they're running and gunning everywhere.
Casey: Mhm.
Cayla: What. Come on. Here's your pun. Now things are.
Casey: I can't remember.
Cayla: Ramping up.
Casey: Ramping up. There you go. I think it came to me so easy before you put me on the spot.
Cayla: Okay.
Casey: Yeah. Now things are ramping up. I wonder where the first boat ramp was.
Cayla: Doesn't say.
Casey: Doesn't say, but. So this is something 87. We had the first muzzleloader deer season. Um, for those of you that may remember, it was doe only. Mhm. Um, and that was because the folks came in and said we want Just give us a few Doe tags so we can use our traditional muzzleloaders to go after deer without the competition of the rifle hunters. And so that was done.
Cayla: Nice.
Casey: I'm not sure how many. I'm not sure if that was the same percentage as it is now. Um, but the once antlered licenses got added to that and it no longer became a traditional muzzleloader license. License? Then there was a percentage that was, um, stuck to it that we couldn't sell over 87. We had our first fish cleaning station. Hey, my wife really likes fish cleaning stations. I guess I feel like bringing them home.
Cayla: Okay, here's my beef. We don't. There's none nones like.
Casey: And none.
Cayla: Well, I just mean you go to Horsehead. None. You go to Alkaline. None. You go to.
Casey: Well find a wildlife club that'll put some funds to it and manage it.
Cayla: Like as a Bismarckian I don't feel like we use them as much, especially since the new.
Casey: Mhm.
Cayla: Um. Filet deal.
Casey: I've never, so there's one up in Garrison that's all season. There isn't very many that are all season.
Cayla: I guess and so we're never going to north side of Garrison.
Casey: We've got one in Turtle Lake.
Cayla: I like the Devils Lake one when we ice fished there. Um, we would use that ice fishing.
Casey: They've got like an all seasons one.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Um, but it takes. That's something to bring up. We can't just build them and then let them sit. Somebody's got to help.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Maintain those. Um, whether it's cleaning them, whether it's dumping the garbage, whether it's. We don't have enough staff to have these all over the place. And so in those areas where somebody takes the initiative to help out, we definitely cost share and stick a lot of funds into getting them ramped up and getting them started.
Cayla: There you go. Ramped up, ramped up.
Casey: There's another one. These fishing guys do a lot of ramping.
Cayla: I think someone did promise on a previous episode that one was coming.
Casey: In Bismarck?
Cayla: Not in Bismarck, but.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: In a usable location. I don't know if I'm, I think they said Steele was.
Casey: A possibility.
Cayla: Or at least on the horizon? Yeah, or a possibility. I don't know where that went. Or, like you said, just kind of firming up all that.
Casey: All that depends on if we can find somebody to have an agreement with to help manage it.
Cayla: All right.
Casey: 90, you want to hit the fishing?
Cayla: Yeah. Just an update of power. Must fill these in. Just an update on fishing waters. We're now at 186 in 1990. So slowly but surely.
Casey: Ramping up.
Cayla: Ramping up from 22.
Casey: I won't forget it now.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: All right. Then 1993 the weighted lottery was implemented for deer gun season.
Cayla: So I'm wondering if that's the first time there was a lottery or the weighting system was.
Casey: The weighting system before it was just straight up luck of the draw.
Cayla: Yeah. Okay.
Casey: And people decided that wasn't fair because somebody else got drawn twice and they didn't. So then they went weighted lottery. We gotta change that. And all I know is it doesn't matter what you do. The lottery system, it's never fair.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Depending on what side of the coin you're on.
Cayla: Mhm. Also, a year-round fishing season began. So, uh, we must have had some sort of season prior to that. But so now that kind of April 1st through 365, I guess.
Casey: So yeah. No I, I don't know. You know, with our licenses being 27 roughly dollars, if you were just going to go fishing, I don't know what else you could do 365 days a year for $27.
Cayla: Nothing. No apps, no subscriptions? No. Yeah, yeah.
Casey: You can't even watch Netflix for a month. Hardly anymore.
Cayla: Maybe two months. Yeah, not quite depending which. Yeah.
Casey: It's like.
Cayla: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Casey: Pretty reasonable.
Cayla: Mhm. Uh 94 first youth deer season.
Casey: Yeah. And that was, that was the one where we did that through proclamation.
Cayla: Okay.
Casey: Where they're guaranteed a deer license when they turn 14. And we could do that because they were eligible for the lottery when they turned 14. So 14 and or 15, you can get your first license. Uh, and hunt this youth deer season.
Cayla: 97 PLOTS! PLOTS was developed and the first landowner access agreements were signed in the fall of 1998. That's pretty cool.
Casey: Yeah. So, yeah, we what, 2000? It's not on here, but I'm gonna say it because 2007, so from 97 to 2007, we ended up hitting a million acres in our PLOTS.
Cayla: That's fast. Yeah. Ten years. Yeah.
Casey: Mhm. And we had a lot of CRP on the landscape at that point. Um, and yeah, fair, a fair portion of those PLOTS tracts were just CRP.
Cayla: Then we've got um, 2005, the first state wildlife Action Plan. So we'll have just had an episode on, um, that and how it's updated every ten years. So we're on our third iteration of the plan, but, um, just kind of addressing the needs of those at risk wildlife species.
Casey: And then in 2006 through eight, we had our first aquatic nuisance ANS rules become effective in 2008. So we started working on them in 2006 and figuring out how best to do that for North Dakota. And the first ones were enacted.
Cayla: 2007,Uh, we've got the first North Dakota outdoors webcast. So.
Casey: It didn't.
Cayla: I know it's only well, it'll be 20 years next year. So that's our longer form video that, um.
Casey: Seems like we've been doing them longer than that.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Have we hit your birthday yet?
Cayla: We did yeah, I just skipped over it.
Casey: Skipped it, okay.
Cayla: Hopefully not 2007. Well, I guess that's crazy to think. Now people are born in. Well, obviously it feels obvious with like, your own kids, but I mean, like that I'd be conversing with people born, right?
Casey: Yeah, conversing. Having an actual conversation.
Cayla: Professional relationship with people born after 2000.
Casey: And then in 2008, we had the NASP National Archery in the Schools Program started. And what do you remember what we're up to as far as number of participants in the state tournament?
Cayla: We just well, we just did it in our singing.
Casey: Yeah, right.
Cayla: It was I think it was 800 archers, but that was specifically we needed like an eight so that was 3D archers and it was closer to a thousand for the bullseye, I think.
Casey: Yeah.
Cayla: Um, also, our deer gun license numbers peaked in 2008 at 149,400 so all that soil bank, CRP. Doing good things.
Casey: Some easy winners. I mean, there's everything. The table was set and everything else aligned kind of to get to that point. And yeah, it was kind of crazy. We were getting multiple tags. You probably don't remember that.
Cayla: Nope, not at all.
Casey: I know we had five tags, you know, and we actually couldn't shoot enough deer.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: In some cases we were having problems with deer.
Cayla: I was gonna say not surprising that next on the list is 2009 CWD was first detected because it's like, oh yeah, there's too many deer.
Casey: Population increase and when do diseases move, when populations are high. Um, but yeah. And I think we started testing for CWD in it a few years before that because it had crept into, um, some other places, South Dakota.
Cayla: Canada?
Casey: And Canada. And so yeah, it was coming closer to the border. And so, we had started to get into it.
Cayla: 2010. Yeah, I was just telling before we started this, I didn't even I didn't move here till 2017. So the pronghorn season was closed and remained so until 2014.
Casey: You've never known the pain of having nine bonus points in the pronghorn system and having it be closed for four years in a row while you have those points?
Cayla: Yeah, 2015, we've got the first adult zebra mussel in the Red River.
Casey: In the Red River. Yep. Mhm. Yeah. Now we've got Ashtabula and a couple others.
Cayla: Mhm.
Casey: Uh Golden,
Casey: Golden Lakes, LaMoure Dam.
Cayla: Yeah, I should know these.
Casey: And then Smishek.
Cayla: Yep. There might be 1 or 2 more.
Casey: I can't remember if there's a couple more. But so yeah, it's a slow progression. We're trying some things to see what if there's anything we can do about some of them. But then yeah then we had, we talked about this a little bit, but the bighorn sheep were transplanted from Montana. From Rocky Boy Reservation to Fort Berthold Reservation.
Cayla: And then they just rammed up and.
Casey: They just rammed up. Yeah, yeah, they've done it exceptionally well. So 2020 till last year, ‘25, five years we were able to have a bighorn sheep season. That's pretty dang good. It's pretty quick. That was some that was some beautiful habitat for bighorn sheep where they were where they were put so worked out well.
Cayla: And then I think this history project we I think was 22 when we were working on this. So that's kind of where our timeline ends. But the last one on there, which I do very well remember, is we saw, um, wish we were there now. winter saw record late ice formation and relatively poor winter ice thickness. Um, most North Dakota waters were clear of ice in late March early April, likely making it the shortest ice pack season on record. I have an Instagram story of we were fishing on Rice Lake in our boat on March 29th.
Casey: Oh, really?
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: Wow.
Cayla: We didn't catch anything.
Casey: We didn't catch anything. But you could say that you were fishing in a boat in North Dakota.
Cayla: Yes. I was, like, drinking a summer shandy. Uh, am I allowed to say that on here?
Casey: I think so.
Cayla: Okay. It was the weekend.
Casey: Yeah, it was a Saturday.
Cayla: But I think it was, like, 70 degrees. Yeah. And I think the only reason we were is because the previous weekend we went down with all of our ice stuff and, like, drove all the way down there and it was, like, eroded all the way, like, almost.
Casey: Falling apart yeah.
Cayla: Yeah. So it was like, I guess we got it's time to bring the boat out. But that's crazy.
Casey: I think that year, too, I was on some pretty sketchy ice. The perch bite was pretty good late in the season on a couple lakes, and you felt weird about even walking out on it.
Cayla: Yeah.
Casey: It was still like. I remember it was still like 9 to 10in thick, but it was like walking on which one comes from the bottom, the stalagmites or the stalactites?
Cayla: Oh, I don't know. But yeah, like squishy.
Casey: Yeah. It was like just all kind of spongy.
Cayla: I hate at the end of spear season we'll pull the big blocks out. But they, you can just like, shatter them. Yeah. It's like, uh.
Casey: Yeah. That's not good.
Cayla: So yeah, I guess it's just interesting.
Casey: When did we have our first podcast? We didn't.
Cayla: Well, fall of 22. Fall of 2022. So, um. Yeah. Knocking on the door of 100 episodes. What is that cheesy saying? You don't know where you're at if you don't know where you've been? I think it's just kind of cool to think about how relatively short a lot of this is. And. Yeah.
Casey: Um, June of 2025, I became deputy director.
Cayla: We'll add it in.
Casey: We'll add it in.
Cayla: Just. Um, so, yeah, just some perspective, I guess, as we.
Casey: A lot of things that you don't think about how sometimes how similar things are and how, you know, wanton waste was an issue 1870 something still an issue today.
Cayla: 22 waters to like 422 waters. But who knows? We could be back, you know, a dry spell or whatever. Um, so. Yeah.
Casey: Yeah, 2000 well, probably about 3,000 licenses for deer to 149,000 licenses to deer to now down around 50,000 licenses per year. I would say it'll never stay stable.
Cayla: Yeah. That's one thing I've learned from our look back through time.
Casey: Mhm. All right.
Cayla: All right. Go hook yourself a salmon on Strawberry Lake.
Casey: Yeah. See if he, if not with all the down imaging and stuff maybe they can find the last one out there.
Cayla: Okay. We'll get into the department droppings. So new licenses you need a new you needed a new license starting April 1st. Um, and also, if you haven't been out yet, because we don't I don't know if the ice will be gone or not when this airs, but, um, it's a new boat registration year. So when you're going in to do that, make sure to get your boat registered.
Casey: Yeah. And then we've got paddlefish snagging season coming up May 1st. So plan ahead and get your tag because it's hard to get one when you get up there and just get one when you get up there. Right. It's got to be mailed to you.
Cayla: Uh, you can get one in some of the offices, but it's going to be during, like, office hours. Uh, yeah.
Casey: So if you get there at eight at night, planning to fish in the morning and ain't gonna happen.
Cayla: Um, but, yeah, I guess a teaser on the next episode will be all things paddlefish.
Casey: Mhm.
Cayla: Uh, again with kind of boat, spring, water. Um, an ANS reminder to clean, drain, dry all boats, live wells, all those things. And then also if you're putting docks in, purchasing new ones, whatever that looks like um, anything brought in needs to be dry for 21 days.
Casey: And then we're coming up on spring. And so far we've been fairly light on moisture. And so just be mindful of fire conditions until things green up decent. And you can go to ndresponse.gov to find fire danger indexes.
Cayla: And then be on the lookout for the Spring Advisory Board meeting schedule if you want to attend those. And um, kind of just stay up to date or um, politely voice concerns and experiences.
Casey: I feel like those things never end like it. It seems like you get done with one round and you're planning the next one already. So.
Cayla: Um, the schedule will be on the website. Yeah.
Casey: But they are good. Mhm. All right. Now that we've dropped the droppings you can get off the pot and get outdoors.